Archives for November 2016

Many questions on the aftermath of Monday’s crash of the LaMia airlines charter flight carrying the flight crew, about 20 journalists, and the Associação Chapecoense de Futebol, a Brazilian soccer team traveling to the finals of the Copa Sudamericana.

Authorities suggested a fuel shortage may have caused the crash as questions emerged about the use of a relatively short-range aircraft to make the transcontinental trip between Santa Cruz, Bolivia and Medellín, Colombia.

The distance between the two cities, according to Google Earth, is about 1,845 miles. The Avro RJ85’s maximum range with a full tank of fuel is 1,842 miles, according to a fact sheet on Airliners.net.

According to reports from international media, the pilot of the downed plane, also appears to be the owner of the airline. It is highly unusual that the owner of an airline would also be piloting one of its aircraft.

Marca is also confirming this report, also suggesting that the downed plane was the only one of the company’s three that could fly, as the other two aircraft were being repaired at the time.

With all the mystery swirling around LAMIA many questions remain: Where was all that money going? Where were these supposed 12 aircraft that were already assembled and in the stage of certification and were obtained through the China-Venezuela agreement?

The Communist regime issued guidelines for the official mourning period:
1. Cubans are forbidden from saying “Good morning” (“Buenos días”) to each other.
2. No alcohol is allowed.
3. Nightlife, the lifeblood of tourism, is shut down.
4. No loud music.
5. The neighborhood watchmen, Comités de la Revolución, are keeping track of any violations to the above rules. They also keep track who shows up (or doesn’t) to sign the book of condolences at the 1,000 designated locations across the island prison after standing in line for hours under the hot sun.
6. Mourners are also compelled to sign a statement of commitment to the Revolución.

Weeks before the robbery, Masetti said, he delivered $50,000 to the Macheteros on orders from his superiors in Castro’s Department of the Americas, the Cuban agency created to support revolutionary movements. The money was for the motor homes the Macheteros used to smuggle [Víctor] Gerena and the $7 million into Mexico. Masetti said he was waiting at the border and helped disguise Gerena, gave him a Cuban passport and arranged his flight from Mexico City to Havana.

Masetti said the Cuban government also provided the Macheteros with radio equipment and advice about narcotics that could be used to incapacitate guards. Afterward, Cuba kept about half the stolen money, according to conversations the FBI later intercepted among members of Los Macheteros.

Fidel had fostered the Puerto Rican Macheteros,

In the period leading up to the Wells Fargo robbery, the Macheteros, or machete wielders, were one of two groups making up the violent wing of the independence movement. The other was the Armed Forces of National Liberation, know by the Spanish acronym FALN.
. . .
The man credited with organizing both groups was Filiberto Ojeda Rios, a Puerto Rican Independentista who moved with his family to Cuba two years after Castro took power and who became an officer in the Cuban intelligence service.

Ojeda was implicated in a rocket attack on the federal courthouse in San Juan which was carried out with weapons abandoned by the U.S. in Vietnam and shipped through Cuba to the Macheteros. He died in 2005 during a shootout with the FBI in Puerto Rico.

Víctor Gerena, the Wells Fargo thief, is believed to still be in Cuba, along with William Morales, a convicted bomb-maker for the FALN on the Fraunces Tavern explosion.

Unemployment in Mexico fell to its lowest level in nine years in October amid strong private-sector job growth that has supported consumption and helped keep the economy expanding.
. . .
The jobs numbers and an apparent stabilization of the balance of payments suggest the economy may not be performing as far below capacity as generally perceived, although an expected economic slowdown and uncertainty following the election of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump could begin to undermine a so-far resilient labor market, he added.

So what really was Fidel’s Cuba? A huge tick – sucking blood for sixty years. First, during the years of the Soviet Union, turning the country into a client state of that defunct system for a few billion dollars a year; enough to keep people fed, well mostly. Then the USSR fell and the tick crawled elsewhere in the desperate search of lifeblood – and those were terrible years, called the “Periodo Especial” in Cuban nomenclature (google it). Rickets, nutritional-deficiency-induced blindness. Starvation. Then along came Hugo – a product of the temper tantrum that paid huge dividends, and the tick latched on. Until Venezuela dried up – this article is the most poignant I’ve ready for a while. But I also wrote one that went viral, “The Suicide of Venezuela” that could have as easily been called a homicide, perpetuated by warden Fidel.

I’ll be on Silvio Canto’s podcast tonight at 8pm Eastern. Will add the link later today.

Lastly, for all of Castro’s ranting about the exploitive nature of capitalism, it takes a truly mercenary mind to come up with the schemes his regime employed to garner hard currency — from drug-running, to assassinations to, well, vampiric behavior. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported in 1966 that 166 Cuban prisoners were executed on a single day in May of that year. But before they were killed, they were forced to undergo the forced extraction of an average of seven pints of blood from their bodies. This blood was sold to Communist Vietnam at a rate of $50 per pint. Those who underwent the bloodletting suffered cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis. But that didn’t stop the executions; the victims were carried on a stretcher to the killing field where they were then shot.

On second thought, Dante may have found it a suitable punishment for Fidel.

Group leader Berta Soler told the Agence France-Presse news agency that they didn’t expect much to change in Cuban politics in the near future, as Castro’s brother Raul continues to lead the country. He took over when Fidel Castro fell ill in 2006.

“It will be the same Cuba with one dictator instead of two. The dictator Fidel Castro died and the dictator Raul Castro remains,” said Soler.
Dissidents also laid low in Santiago de Cuba, the eastern city where Castro’s ashes will be laid to rest next Sunday.

“We won’t conduct any actions against the regime in the streets in the next days, especially out of concern for the repression we could face,” said former prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer.

According to Maldonado’s mother, Maria Victoria Machado Gonzalez, he was beaten and dragged across the floor as he was brought to a police unit in San Agustin on 51st Avenue and 240th Street. But there have been no official charges released, and there is no record of Maldonado’s detention.
. . .
Maldonado’s abduction came hours after the official news that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died at the age of 90. Other known activists such as the Ladies in White have stated they will not be out on the street for their weekly human rights protest on Sunday mornings. Civic activists with the group Hugo Damian Prieto Blanco and Jose Diaz Silva have also been taken into custody. Their locations are not known.

The moment has arrived. Yet the prospects for their liberation are still not great.

They are now ruled by the dead red’s 85-year-old brother Raúl, and behind him are the next generation of Castros and the military. This ruthless band of criminals owns everything on the island and has no incentive to change. President Obama’s normalization of relations and de facto lifting of the U.S. travel ban has funneled fresh resources to them, strengthening their power.

Forget the gulags and the concentration camps and the firing squads. Those are the stories that made the papers at least – stories that were told. No – the most important part of this tragedy is not what happened, but what didn’t happen. The novels that were not written, stories of beach and mountain and freedom and loss; the beautiful paintings that did not come to be, which in turn did not inspire abounding love – the love of storybooks. The cuisine that was not refined; the businesses that did not provide for families; inventions that do not help humanity; diseases that were not cured.

The life that was not lived.

This – for me – is the greatest tragedy of all. We have this life at our fingertips, those of us from America. To a greater measure than others; but even those from Panama, or Chile, or Paraguay can see that which they wish to attain. They can uncork the $1000 bottle of wine and dream of the day they will sit in front of the sheer white tablecloth and drink deeply. They can read the novel, and imagine how they would make the stories unfold, improving them. They can look at the girl across their own malecon and imagine how they will win their fortune and then come for her.

None of these things have been imagined – for six generations – in Cuba.